Feeding the Hunger
by WeirdLittleStories
Summary: Sylar's reformation during "The Wall" was real ... but so is the Hunger. He needs to find a way to feed it that doesn't involve murder, and Peter has an idea that might help. But will Peter's plan bring them closer, or will it tear them apart? (The plan involves pain and blood, and Peter is consensually hurt. If that doesn't interest you, now is the time to move on.) COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **

**1. **This story takes place a week or so after "Brave New World." It assumes that Peter and Sylar became lovers sometime during the events of "The Wall" and that they've agreed to continue that relationship in the real world. However, most of the M/M sex happens off-screen; the on-screen sex happens while Peter is shape-shifted into a woman. So you probably need to be comfortable with both slash and het to read this story.

**2. **I'm brand-new to _Heroes _fandom (I lived in a TV-free household for a couple of decades, so I've just now seen the show for the first time), so please be gentle with me.

* * *

**Feeding the Hunger**

Peter looked across the breakfast table at Sylar. "You've been ducking this question, and I'm not going to let you get away with that this time." He leaned forward and looked at his lover more intently. "I want to know how you intend to deal with the Hunger now that we're back in the real world and the crisis with the carnival is resolved."

Sylar sighed, somewhat theatrically. "My reformation is sincere, Peter. I don't intend to kill anyone except in self defense or in defense of another."

Peter pointed at Sylar. "That's what I'm talking about! I _know _your reformation is sincere, but whenever I ask about the Hunger, you pretend that I don't trust you. It took me awhile to catch on, but I've finally realized that you're pretending to be wounded to get out of answering the question. Your reformation may be real, but so is the Hunger. I've _had _the damned thing, so I know. Don't duck, don't deflect, don't lie, don't prevaricate. Tell me. Talk to me. _What are you going to do about the freaking Hunger?_"

Sylar looked down and stirred his coffee to give himself time to think. He looked back up at Peter and put down his spoon. "You had it for a short time, so you might not have had the time to analyze it. I lived with it for a long time, though, so I know that the Hunger has several different components. The largest component is a desire to know, to understand, to acquire esoteric knowledge. I fed that component of the Hunger by taking powers, but I can feed the desire to amass knowledge in other ways."

Peter smiled and leaned back in his chair. "That's why you've been getting all those books from the library!"

Sylar nodded. "I'm starting with Biology and Chemistry. It's hard right now, because I'm mostly acquiring basic knowledge, the background I need to understand the more advanced stuff." He took a sip of coffee, then put the cup back down. "Once I'm knowledgeable enough to understand cutting-edge research, that will feed the Hunger better. I'm not sure why, but knowledge held by only a few satiates the Hunger better than general knowledge."

Peter tilted his head to the side as he contemplated his lover. "Have you thought about going to college? With your ability to turn stuff into gold, tuition shouldn't be a problem, and God knows you're smart enough."

"I've thought about it, and I'll end up there eventually, but college is too slow. Most students only want to study desultorily, so they can spend half their time socializing or getting wasted." Sylar shook his head. "That's not fast enough for me; the Hunger won't wait that long. I thought I'd study on my own at my own pace, then test out of the basic courses when I was ready to do graduate-level work. Eventually, I'll need to work in a lab, so I'll probably have to get a doctorate." He sighed. "I'll need to find someone very secure to work under, so they won't need to slow me down to keep from feeling threatened."

Peter laughed. "How little they know, if they think getting a college degree in half the time is you at your most threatening!"

Sylar chuckled. "Yeah." He sobered. "But it _is_ a problem, Peter. Most people want to make their reputations and their livings with their research; they aren't learning as fast as they can in order to keep themselves from turning into monsters. Professors at big research universities are notoriously driven, but no one really knows what _driven _is like if they don't have the Hunger snapping at their heels."

Peter looked challengingly at Sylar. "What other components does the Hunger have?"

Sylar looked away. "I'd rather not talk about the other components."

Peter took a fortifying swig of coffee, thinking about how to handle this, then set the cup down with a decisive clatter. "I know. There's nothing scary about reading textbooks or doing research in a university lab, so it must be this other component that freaks you out. What is it?"

Sylar shook his head. "You don't really want to know, Peter. I'll manage it, and no one will die. That's all you need to know."

Peter reached across the table and laid his hand on Sylar's, squeezing it supportively. "You can tell me, Sylar. We're in this together. If we're gonna be partners out here in the real world, that means that what affects you affects me, too. When you try to hide stuff from me, that just tells me that it's important, and that makes me feel that I don't just _want_ to know, I _need _to know."

Sylar slumped, looking weary and defeated, then after a minute he straightened and looked steadily at Peter. His voice was confrontational, and it seemed that he expected to be rejected. "The Hunger isn't _nice_, Peter. It isn't pleasant or civilized or sane. I can feed the need to _know _with facts and research, but there's also a need to _take _and ..." He swallowed. "And a need to _hurt_." He shook his head. "There's a reason why my first attempt to feed the Hunger involved taking the powers of other specials. Doing that got me knowledge that was both very rare and extremely useful. It let me _take_ — both powers and lives — and both the fear and the pain of my victims felt delicious to the Hunger." He looked bleakly at Peter. "The Hunger is a monstrous thing."

Peter nodded encouragingly and squeezed Sylar's hand again. "Hey, hey, it's okay. I know the Hunger isn't daisies and puppies and laughter."

Sylar laughed sourly. "No, it isn't. If I feed the knowledge component in another way, I can change it from blood and death to blood and pain, but ... I can't get rid of it; I can only manage it."

"Blood and pain IS an improvement on blood and death," Peter said. "Don't downplay the difficulty of what you're trying to do by minimizing that."

Sylar took a deep breath and nodded, looking at Peter in wonder, surprised that the idealistic paramedic was able to handle the thought of his lover's dealing out blood and pain.

"How..." Peter swallowed. "How will you find someone to, um, _use_ to feed the Hunger on? And how will you make sure you can stop at pain and not progress to death, once the Hunger is riding you?"

Sylar closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. "I haven't really decided yet. As I see it, I have two main options." He held up one finger. "Option 1 is that I can go to a BDSM club and look for heavy players. That's good because the person I feed the Hunger on would be willing. It's bad because people who are willing to play hard enough to feed the Hunger are likely to be in short supply, and of those few... most of them will probably be pretty high-maintenance."

He held up two fingers. "Option 2 is that I patrol the streets at night in the high-crime parts of town and dole out punishment to would-be muggers, rapists, and murderers. That's good because I'd be cutting the crime rate and hurting people who actually deserved it. It's bad because I'd have to be in the right place at the right time, and that would be difficult, since most criminals don't commit crimes in front of witnesses."

Sylar looked down, sighed, then looked back up. "Plus I don't really have the moral high ground for deciding that some criminal deserves punishment. If a mere mugger deserved the kind of punishment that the Hunger demands I inflict on someone, I'd deserve to be tortured until the end of time, myself, for the murders I've committed."

Peter shook his head. "I don't like either of those options, because no matter how good your intentions are, once the Hunger is driving you, it may be hard to stop short of death or maiming. You definitely can't kill or maim someone you play with, so Option 1 is out. And only the most heinous crimes deserve the death penalty. Trying to mug some old lady is awful, but you can't kill or maim somebody for doing that; even most murderers aren't assigned that kind of penalty. So Option 2 is out, too."

Sylar glared across the table at Peter. "Then what would you have me do, Peter? Should I go back to murdering specials? Or is suicide my only option? It was the first option I considered, right after I got my power, before Noah and Elle suckered me into my second murder. I'd hoped to avoid that, but if you think I can't feed the Hunger in any other way ... I'm out of options."

Peter rolled his eyes. "No, no, of course I don't want you to go kill yourself! And I know that you don't _want _to kill anybody, you're going to be trying _not _to kill anybody, but there's a chance that you'll slip and hurt somebody more than you mean to. So obviously, you should feed the Hunger on someone who has regeneration. And no, I don't mean Claire."

Sylar blew out a long breath. "You mean you."

"Of course." Peter held up one finger. "Who believes that you really have changed, and you really are good now?" He added a second finger. "Who is already in an intimate relationship with you?" He added a third finger. "Who, besides Claire, has or can get regeneration?" He pointed the fingers at himself. "I'm the obvious choice!"

Sylar shook his head. "Two of those are reasons why I _don't _want it to be you. If I spend a couple of hours torturing you every other week, even _you _won't be able to hold on to the idea that I've reformed." He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "Hell, I didn't want you to even _know _about it, much less be the victim of it."

Peter smiled. "You should have more faith in me. Or maybe you'd forgotten that I had the Hunger for awhile, myself. I'm impressed that you think you can handle the damned thing _without_ killing anyone, but you've always had a strong will." He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. "What's the other reason why you don't want to do this with me?"

Sylar looked shocked. "You have to ask why? I love you! I don't want to spend the rest of my life torturing you on a bimonthly basis. I don't want to think about your screaming in pain every time I see your face. And I don't want you to think about my hurting you every time you see _my_ face. I don't want the things the Hunger will drive me to do to taint our relationship, especially considering that it's the one good thing in my life."

Peter looked sympathetic but implacable. "Sure, in an ideal world, you'd use someone else, some other person who was willing to do this for you, some other person who had regeneration, some other person who was available whenever you needed them."

Sylar put his face in his hands. "You really are the only possible choice, aren't you?"

Peter pointed to emphasize what he was about to say. "I'm the only practical choice, but more importantly, I'm the only _moral_ choice, because I'm the only person who would agree to do this while knowing just how far you need to go."

Sylar raised his head and looked at Peter. "How do we keep this from tearing us apart, then?"

Peter thought for awhile, then smiled. "I have an idea! You give me shape-shifting, and I'll shift into someone very different from me, someone who doesn't remind you of me at all. Once I'm shifted, then you give me regeneration. After you're finished hurting me and I'm all healed up, you can give me shape-shifting again, and I'll turn back into myself."

Sylar tilted his head to one side as he considered this. "That ... might reduce the damage to our relationship. I guess I should shift, too, so that you don't think of pain when you look at me."

Peter shook his head vehemently. "No. I can only do this with you because it's _you, _because you need this and I love you. If you look like someone else, that'll make it a lot harder for me."

"Oh." Sylar frowned. "I guess you know your own psychology best." He thought for a moment. "Can you get René's power? I don't want to hurt him, but I'll need it for this plan, and I can get it from you via empathy if you have it."

"Sure," Peter said, "He'll let me copy it. But I don't quite understand what you need it for."

"We need you to _have _regeneration, in case I slip and kill you accidentally. But if it's active while I'm, uh, doing things to you ..." Sylar paused and looked away.

"You need to pick a verb," Peter said in the completely matter-of-fact voice that paramedics use to talk about things that most people would prefer not to think about. "We can say 'playing,' since that's what BDSM enthusiasts call it, or we can call it 'torturing,' since that's what you say it'll be like, or we can call it 'feeding on,' to remind us that this is because of the Hunger and not because you're a bad person. But don't tap-dance around it; pick a freaking verb!"

Sylar looked consideringly at Peter. "I think I'd forgotten that blood and pain are the things you work with, all day, every day, as a paramedic. They aren't frightening or confusing or unfamiliar; they're just part of the job for you."

Peter smiled. "I'm usually trying to _relieve_ the patient's pain and _stanch_ their bleeding, but yes, those things are certainly not unfamiliar. I don't have the same relationship to pain or to blood loss that most people do. I work to prevent them — I work very hard to prevent them — but they're commonplace, the stuff of everyday life for me."

Sylar took a deep breath. "That helps. It helps a lot, actually. In the past, during the ... the murders, I've been red with blood halfway to my elbows. And whenever people have caught a glimpse of that, the sight of me wearing so much blood has always shocked them nearly as much as the ending of a life. But the blood won't shock you." He looked at Peter. "The cruelty might, though."

Peter looked down. "Yeah," he said softly. "I have a hard time with cruelty, in general, but I've seen an awful lot of it in the past few years." He looked up again. "I never thought I'd see American citizens hooded and chained, shuffling along while their own government trained guns on them. And I never thought it would be my brother who was behind it, who would have not only set up the program but deliberately sent me there." He blew out a breath and looked intently at Sylar. "I don't care _what _you do to me; nothing could hurt as much as what Nathan did that day."

Sylar reached across the table and held Peter's hand. "I'm sorry that happened, but it will never happen again," he said gently. His voice hardened, and he released Peter's hand and clenched a fist. "WE will make sure that it _never happens again_."

Peter nodded grimly. "We will." He took a deep breath and looked lovingly at Sylar. "And that's just one more reason why I need to help you with this. We _all _need for the world's most powerful special to be on the side of good. I can't let the Hunger force you to give that up."

Sylar smirked. "Between loving me and needing to save the world, your martyr complex is fully activated."

Peter laughed. "I guess I deserve that. But if I were you, I wouldn't laugh at the guy who's gonna let you torture him twice a month."

Sylar grimaced. "No, that's not the verb I want. I think I like your suggestion of 'feed on,' since it reminds you that I'm not doing this out of desire, and it reminds me to take only as much as is necessary to appease the Hunger, not to get carried away by," he stopped abruptly.

"By how good it feels," Peter finished Sylar's sentence matter-of-factly. "Feeding the Hunger feels good — no, it feels _awesome_ — and we both have to be able to acknowledge that. You're not just gonna feed on me, you're gonna look like you're having the time of your life while you're feeding on me, and I have to be able to handle that." His face took on the look of determination that Sylar knew so well. "I _will _handle that, because we have no other options."

Sylar picked up Peter's hand and kissed it. "What did I ever do to deserve you?"

Peter smirked at him. "You must have been awfully good in a past life, because I don't think it could have been anything you did in this one."

Sylar laughed, surprised that his lover was willing to allude so freely to his murderous past. He kept underestimating Peter, kept thinking that "gentle" meant "soft" or that "kind" meant "weak." He knew better — spending five years alone with Peter had taught him better — but he couldn't always put aside the habits of a lifetime.

"So," Peter said, "What do you want me to look like? Tell me so I know whose DNA to borrow when I go into work this afternoon. You said you wanted someone real different from how I normally look. You want a blonde, an African-American guy, or maybe an Asian?"

Sylar gave him a devilish grin. "I want you to be a woman, Peter."

"A woman!" Peter ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, that IS different, but ..."

"Peter," Sylar said seriously. "I want to hurt body parts that you don't normally have, to keep this as far away from our normal life as possible. And I want to turn as much of the Hunger as possible to rough sex, so that the actual, uh, torture part will be shorter. If I don't want to contaminate our regular sex life with those memories, then it should be a completely different kind of sex from what we have normally."

"But, I _like_ rough sex," Peter said. "You know that."

Sylar shook his head. "Not _this_ rough. I'm calling it a slightly more bearable alternative to torture, Peter. Remember that I didn't just say that I needed to know and to hurt ..." He looked away.

"Oh. I remember now. You also said you needed to _take_." Peter thought for a second. "You'll need to rape me, then? Consensual sex wouldn't hit the 'take' button?"

Sylar swallowed. "Yeah. Either that or ... torture you for a lot longer."

Peter nodded. "Okay, that makes sense. I guess we can try things a couple of different ways, see which is better."

Sylar blew out a breath. "Yeah." He picked up his coffee cup, and Peter could see that his hands were shaking.

Peter pointed at Sylar's hands. "Tell me about that. Are you just nervous, or is something else going on?"

Sylar put the cup down. "I, ah, it's been long enough that the Hunger is riding me hard. Talking about feeding it makes it a lot harder to refrain from actually doing it."

"Oh." Peter swallowed. "I hadn't realized that things had ... progressed to that point. But you did say that the studying you were doing wasn't really helping much yet. You expect it to help you later, but too many people know the things you're learning now."

Sylar clenched his jaw. "Right."

"So you'll need to feed on me soon," Peter said matter-of-factly. "I have tomorrow off; does that work for you?"

Sylar relaxed. "Yeah. Yeah, tomorrow would be great. Are you ... are you sure?"

Peter nodded determinedly. "I'm not letting you murder someone, and I'm not letting you kill yourself, so yeah, I'm sure." He paused, tilted his head to one side, and looked at Sylar, deliberately putting on a more playful tone. "So, what kind of woman do you like? There's an awful lot of DNA floating around the hospital, and I could grab any of it. Do you want tall or short? Slender or curvy? Blonde, brunette, or redhead?"

Sylar smiled unwillingly, touched by Peter's courage. "I want pale skin, so I can see bruises and other wounds as clearly as possible. And breasts of average size or larger, since I'll be paying special attention to them, and the larger the canvas, the easier for you."

"Part of that thing where you hurt body parts I don't normally have."

"Right."

"Okay," Peter said. He put on the kind of voice that movie advertisements usually used. "One pale-skinned woman with medium-to-large tits, coming soon, to a torture chamber near you!"

Sylar goggled at him.

Peter grinned. "What, you want me to be serious? Fuck that! Any paramedic who lasts longer than a year knows that dark humor is the only way to see bad stuff and stay sane. If I use bleak humor to cope with blood and pain on the job, you'll just have to put up with my using it for this!"

Sylar nodded gravely. "I bow to your superior knowledge of the subject."

Peter shook his head. "I know how you used to be, back when you were killing. I know you have that same sense of humor. You need to stop protecting me from who you are and what you've done; if we're gonna be lovers, you have to show me the real you, and that includes letting this side of yourself out."

"Oh, Peter." Sylar leaned forward and reached across the small table to push back a lock of Peter's hair. "Peter, don't tempt me quite so hard, or I might forget about that new leaf that I've turned over."

Peter gave him a sultry look, and Sylar growled. Peter shivered, and seeing that, Sylar picked him up with telekinesis and began walking to the bedroom with Peter floating along beside him like a Peter-shaped package. He stopped the telekinesis when Peter was floating over the bed, letting him drop a foot to the mattress with a small thump. Sylar straddled Peter, grabbed his wrists, and pressed them to the mattress over his head, holding him down and growling into his face. "Tell me again about how you like it rough. Tell me again, Peter."

And Peter licked his lips, stared into his lover's smoldering eyes, and told him again.

.

.


	2. Chapter 2

_The next morning:_

Peter deliberately kept himself in the moment. Denial was an old and valued friend, and the longer he could keep himself from thinking about what he and Sylar were going to do today, the easier it would be to take a shower, to eat breakfast ... and to keep that breakfast down. They'd agreed to use "feed on" as their verb, but before they'd agreed on that, Sylar had used the word "torture." Peter was up for saving the world — any day, any way — but knowingly giving himself over for torture, well, that took a kind of bravery that he hadn't gotten quite as much practice with.

But Peter needed to protect people from the Hunger, and the recipients of that protection included Sylar himself. Sylar had been all too serious about committing suicide as an alternative to going back to murdering specials, and while Peter was glad that Sylar was truly committed to giving up murder, giving up his own life wasn't the answer. Peter didn't just want Sylar's love and his company — though he certainly did want those things — he also wanted Sylar's strength and array of abilities available to the world, in case they were needed again. If Claire's ill-considered jump from the Ferris wheel started a new witch-hunt for specials, Sylar's power might be needed all too soon. Hmm, maybe what he would be doing today _was _saving the world, after all, just not as directly as usual.

But that was too close to the things he'd decided not to think about until later. Peter deliberately focused on the immediate moment and immersed himself in the texture of his scrambled eggs, the crunching sounds his toast made as he bit into it, and the flavor of his orange juice. The orange juice reminded him that he'd volunteered at a blood drive a couple of weeks ago, where orange juice was given to all of the blood donors as they recovered, since its combination of fluid, natural sugars, and electrolytes helped people to replace their blood volume. And THAT reminded him that Sylar had said the Hunger wanted not just pain but also blood. Would Sylar just cut him open for it, or would he be drawing blood during some of their other, as yet unnamed, activities? What was Sylar going to actually DO to him, anyway?

No, no, concentrate on breakfast. Be _here_ now. Eat your toast, listen to it crunch, just feel the savory greasiness of the butter while you chew it. Bite off another piece of toast and concentrate on _it. _Biting, yeah, Sylar really likes biting during sex, and Peter really likes being bitten ... what would that biting be like once it had the Hunger behind it? It would be a shame if biting became associated with trauma in his mind, so that they couldn't ... oh, hell. Maybe he should think about his shift at work yesterday; that might be a nice distraction.

He and Hesam had responded to a call at a construction site and helped a carpenter who'd lost control of his nail gun and ended up with two nails in his hand and one in his wrist. The carpenter himself had wanted to be stoic about the whole thing and just pull the nails out and continue working, but his supervisor had insisted on calling the paramedics, which was good, given how much the one in his wrist had bled when they took it out. Peter hoped that Sylar wouldn't use their upcoming 'feeding' to get back at him for that time when Peter had nailed him to a table, because ... gosh, these eggs sure were creamy. He'd have to ask Sylar how he cooked them, to get them so tender, since his own eggs usually turned out kinda rubbery.

* * *

In the kitchen cleaning up the dishes he'd dirtied while cooking breakfast, Sylar used his telepathy to listen in on Peter's thoughts. He didn't normally use telepathy on Peter without explicit permission, but he thought that monitoring Peter's mental and emotional state would be crucial today.

The part of him that loved Peter was distressed to be the cause of his lover's skittishness this morning, but the Hunger enjoyed the taste of Peter's fear. Peter was clearly trying very hard not to think about what they would do today, but his denial wasn't working as well as usual, and fear kept leaking through. That was delicious, and they hadn't even started yet. Sylar grabbed the Hunger and forced it down. "Soon," he told it. He would feed it soon, but he needed to be Peter's caring and considerate boyfriend first.

Sylar knew that Peter enjoyed his lover's hints of darkness, enjoyed having sex with a dangerous man, enjoyed the feeling that he was playing with fire. The Hero in Peter didn't get as much exercise as it needed, even in a full-time job as a paramedic, for all that most people would see his occupation as exceedingly heroic. The Hero also needed to redeem a serial killer — via love, no less — in order to feel fully satisfied. But Peter only let himself enjoy Sylar's darkness because the former killer truly had changed, truly did see goodness as more satisfying than evil, truly did find heroism more compelling than villainy.

Sylar was under no illusions about Peter's attitude towards him; he knew that both sides of himself were necessary to this relationship. He was sure that Peter needed his lover to be mostly good in order to allow himself to relish the dark and dangerous elements that still existed in Sylar. Peter would find him dull without the darkness and the danger, but he'd find him unbearable without the goodness. Sylar needed to balance himself carefully, as if he were a dish that he'd concocted to appeal to Peter's palate: too much watchmaker was too bland, but too much serial killer was too spicy; he needed a base of watchmaker with just a soupçon of serial killer for flavor.

It might be pathetic of him to adjust his personality to Peter's liking. It might be. But Peter came closer to loving him as he really was than anyone else ever had, certainly more than Virginia did. And if he had to alter himself a tad, well, he'd been in the midst of a wholesale revamping of his personality, anyway, when Peter had joined him in Matt's nightmare world. If he wanted to be a good person, his personality needed a bit of adjustment, and who knew more about goodness than Peter I've-saved-53-people-this-month Petrelli? It was only reasonable to use Peter as a guide. And if Peter liked a bit of serial killer in his watchmaker for flavoring, that only helped Sylar feel that Peter really did love _him, _that Peter didn't insist that he completely lobotomize himself in order to be acceptable.

* * *

As soon as Peter finished his breakfast, he jumped up from the table and took his dishes into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher. Sylar was hand-washing the nonstick frying pan and the knives at the kitchen sink, and Peter moved behind him and leaned up to deposit a kiss on the back of his lover's neck. Sylar turned and smiled at him. "Let me rinse the soap off of these, and you can pay the cook for breakfast with another dozen of those."

Peter smiled back. "Lemme go brush my teeth first. Meet you in the living room?"

Sylar nodded. "Yeah."

They met in the living room, and Peter delivered the requisite kisses, starting out with joking pecks but getting into it before he'd given Sylar more than half of the dozen promised kisses. The last few were wet, messy, and heated, and Peter wasn't the only one who was breathing hard. He pulled back long enough to say, "There's nothing I'd like more than to take this to the bedroom, but I know we have other plans for today, and I know those plans are important."

Sylar nodded and gestured towards the sofa. "Sit down, Peter. There are a few things we need to talk about before we get started with today's ... activities."

"Okay." Peter sat down and watched as Sylar seated himself in the armchair across from the sofa. "I had some things I wanted to say, too, but you go first."

Sylar looked nervously at Peter. "Once we get started, I'm going to be different. I'll need for you to be as scared as possible and as unwilling as possible, and I'll be behaving in such a way as to foster those attitudes in you." He looked down for a moment, then back up. "But while the Hunger will feed on your fear, I don't want you to think that you're _actually_ in danger. I haven't reverted to serial-killer mode, but I plan to _act _as if I have, to try to scare you."

Peter nodded. "Got it." He smiled. "But doesn't telling me this in advance kinda undermine what you're planning to do? Wouldn't it be more effective to tell me that you're acting afterwards?"

Sylar shook his head. "It might be more effective, but that's not the most important thing here. If what we do today doesn't feed the Hunger adequately, I can follow my original plan to feed on criminals, or I can kill myself, or I can ask Noah Bennett if the Company knows of a type of brain surgery that would take my powers away permanently. But if I make you think I'm the person I used to be, and you leave me ..." He swallowed. "There's nothing worse than that."

Peter blinked. He'd known that he was important to Sylar — how could he not be, when he'd been the only other person in their shared world for five long years — but he hadn't realized that Sylar believed that lobotomy or suicide were the _good_ alternatives, compared to losing Peter. He didn't plan to stop loving Sylar, but knowing what was at stake added pressure on a day when he already felt stressed. He looked reassuringly at Sylar. "Don't worry, I don't plan to leave you. Remember that having you feed the Hunger on me was my idea to begin with."

"I know. But the reality may ... shake you." Sylar smiled. "But I guess I shouldn't underestimate you; I know how loyal you were to Nathan and still are to Angela, in spite of everything they did."

Peter grimaced. "It's a hell of a thing when a reformed serial killer doesn't even have to work very hard to be better than my mother."

Sylar thought he'd better not touch this and turned the conversation. "You said you had things you wanted to say?"

Peter sighed. "I know we talked yesterday about how the Hunger needs to _take, _and I understand that. It's important to me, though, that both of us know that I'm giving myself to you willingly. You can pretend that you're forcing me if you need to. You can even manipulate the situation so that I stop being willing in the moment; I consent to that. But I can only do this if I'm doing it for _you, _out of love for you or to protect you or to protect other people from you. I need to know — and I need _you_ to know — that this is a sacrifice that comes from my heart."

Sylar inhaled sharply. "That ... that means a lot to me, Peter. I've never ... no one's ever thought I was worth as much as week-old fish, much less worth this." He paused and shook his head. "I hope you won't take it the wrong way, though, when I tell you that I'm going to pretend to forget that you ever said that, at least while we're feeding the Hunger."

Peter smiled ruefully. "Yeah." He looked around. "So, are we gonna do this here?"

Sylar looked shocked. "In our living space? Absolutely not! I scouted locations while you were at work yesterday, and I found a place upstate that's fairly quick to fly to and far away from anyone who could hear us. It's an abandoned factory/warehouse that nobody wants, but it has plenty of space, and the bathroom and electrical system are in good working order." He smirked. "I even tracked down the real estate agent a few miles away in Millbrook and rented it legally."

Peter nodded approvingly. "Good job." He stood up. "You wanna grab René's power from me and then give me flight?"

"Yeah." Sylar stood also, then moved close to Peter and stared into his eyes for awhile, cocking his head to one side as he attuned himself to his lover and groped for Peter's latest power with his Intuitive Aptitude. A rush of energy and a sudden _knowing_ notified him that he'd acquired the Haitian's power. "Got it," he said. "Go ahead and grab flight."

Peter grasped Sylar's wrist and concentrated, finding and taking flight easily, since he'd had it so many times before. "I'm gonna put on a jacket for flying. Is there anything else we should bring with us?"

Sylar shook his head. "I rented a car in Millbrook and bought a load of supplies for the warehouse yesterday. In addition to, uh, some other things that you'll find out about in due time, I delivered a case of bottled water, a bunch of snacks, a bed, and some sheets and towels and stuff."

"Oh." Peter looked at Sylar. "You've been busy."

"The Hunger was riding me hard after our talk yesterday. Setting up helped me to keep it at bay." Sylar shrugged on his own jacket and stepped out onto the fire escape. "Follow me?"

"Yeah." Peter zipped his jacket and joined Sylar on the fire escape. "Lead the way."

* * *

Peter saw Sylar slow down and then land on the roof of a small factory building a few miles outside of Millbrook, New York, so he slowed himself and landed beside his lover a few seconds later. They entered the factory through the door in the roof and climbed down two flights of grey metal stairs, ending up in a large open space with high ceilings, sturdy walls, and a concrete floor.

Sylar gestured to the space around them. "This is the warehouse part. This room is too large and impersonal for today's activities, but I thought the space might come in handy in the future, especially if ... well, we can talk about that later."

He led Peter to a door in the far wall, which opened into the factory section of the building. These rooms were smaller, though they still had high ceilings and sturdy walls, and while the floors were still concrete, they had drains in them. Sylar led him through a few such rooms before ending up in the place that seemed to be their final destination. This room had been set up with a queen-sized bed, already made up with sheets and blankets; a table covered with a cloth, which appeared to be hiding an assortment of small objects, judging by the various lumps under the cloth; and a massage table adjusted to its maximum height, presumably to raise Peter to a level that would make it more convenient for Sylar to work on him.

Peter looked around the room, then turned to Sylar. "Should I shift now?"

"In a minute." Sylar moved closer, took Peter's face in his hands and kissed him gently. In a sweet and loving voice, he said, "While you are in this form, you are my beloved, and I am yours. That will never change." He paused, gazing into Peter's eyes searchingly, as if needing to find something specific there. He let go of Peter's face, took a step back, then went on in a voice that was much harder and deeper. "But as soon as you shift, you will be my victim."

Peter swallowed. "I understand." He blew out a breath. "Give me shape-shifting?"

Sylar held out his arm for Peter to touch. Peter grabbed his wrist and sifted through Sylar's abilities. He'd only had shape-shifting once before, and it took a few moments to pin it down and absorb it. Once he had, he took a vial from his pocket with a few flakes of skin in it. "There's a redheaded nurse who usually works in the Surgery department, but two ER nurses were out sick yesterday, so they called her in to help out. She has really pale skin, and she's someone I don't normally work with, so turning into her for this won't be as awkward as taking the form of someone I see every day."

"Sounds like a good choice. How'd you get the skin?"

"I dragged the clipboard against her arm a little when taking it back from her after delivering a patient, then scraped the edge of the clipboard into a vial." Peter grinned. "I wiped it down with alcohol first, so I wouldn't get Hesam by accident."

Sylar raised an eyebrow. "You're sneakier than I give you credit for."

Peter grimaced. "I _choose_ not to act like my relatives, but I got the same training Nathan got. I figured this was a good cause."

Sylar smiled. "Thanks. Let's see her, then."

Peter took a deep breath, then began to shift. His form rippled disturbingly, and after a few moments, a woman in green surgical scrubs stood there blinking and looking dazedly at Sylar. She was tall, with carrot-red hair down to the middle of her back and the ultra-pale complexion that often accompanies red hair. Her figure was pleasingly round, a little more generously padded than was currently fashionable, but with the extra padding in all the right places. Most importantly of all, she looked nothing whatsoever like Peter Petrelli.

Peter looked down at herself and whistled. "God, this is weird." She lifted her arm to eye level and looked at it wonderingly, then ran her hands down the sides of her body, looking quite befuddled as her hands skated over generous hips. "I know what she looks like, and I knew I was gonna turn into her, but actually _being_ her ... this is completely surreal."

Sylar nodded. "It is. I changed form so many times during the week after I got shape-shifting that I started to lose track of who I actually was. It's a really useful ability, but it can definitely be overused."

Peter smiled. "I'm only planning to ever use it for this. I like my usual form okay, and there are lots more useful abilities for a paramedic."

Sylar looked her up and down. "I like your usual form _very_ much, but this one will be useful for our purposes today." He held out an arm. "Here. Take regeneration."

"Whoa," Peter said. "A minute here. Let me get used to this."

"No," Sylar snapped. "I _want _you off-balance. Take regeneration."

Peter sighed and took regeneration. Sylar looked at her questioningly, and she nodded. "Yeah, I got it."

An instant later, Peter felt herself slammed against the wall, two feet above floor level, crushed against the industrial-strength wall by Sylar's telekinesis and helpless in the face of it. It reminded her far too much of being held against Mohinder's wall in a similar way, and she had to remind herself of why she was there in order to keep herself from fighting back reflexively. Sylar was clearly using René's power to suppress Peter's regeneration, since her back hurt from being slammed against the wall, and the pain wasn't diminishing, the way it would if regeneration was healing her.

Sylar smirked and took a step towards her. "Peter Petrelli, I've finally got you where I want you," he drawled, self-satisfied pleasure dripping from every word. "Thanks to you, I finally have the Haitian's power, and I can suppress any and all of your abilities. You're nothing but a normal, unevolved human right now — not that you could stand against me anyway — and I can do _anything I want _to you." He cocked his head to one side and gloated at the woman before him. "Let's see, where shall I begin?" He raised a finger, and the surgical scrubs were slit down the middle, then fell from Peter's body as Sylar's telekinesis tugged them down.

Peter's naked body was covered with freckles, as redheads often were, and Sylar looked gleefully at her. "Freckles! I was hoping for that. Let's play 'connect the dots,' shall we?" He freed Peter's head so that Peter could look down at herself, then pointed his finger at a freckle on Peter's breast. He traced a line from that freckle to a neighbor as his ability cut a straight line from the first freckle to the second, the blood welling up and looking shockingly dark against the ultra-pale skin.

Peter gasped. She'd been warned that there'd be blood, but she hadn't expected it quite so soon, nor that Sylar would be cheerful and playful, cutting into her flesh as if it were a children's game. As she watched, Sylar cut another line from the second freckle to a third, then a line from the third to a fourth. She winced as the small pains from all the little slashes added up.

"I've always loved constellations, haven't you?" Sylar asked her, exactly as if cutting patterns on Peter's skin was a perfectly normal activity. "And you're so generously endowed with freckles that we can make any patterns we want. I can cut you all day if I want to and never run out of freckles." He abruptly dropped the cheerful, chatty demeanor and added in a much harder voice, "And Peter, I want to. I _love _making you bleed."

Peter closed her eyes and reminded herself that Sylar wasn't really like this. Sylar wanted fear and unwillingness, in addition to blood and pain, and he was pretending to be evil so as to encourage Peter to feel that fear and unwillingness. She knew that Sylar was an excellent actor, and he'd even _warned_ Peter that he would be acting. But if the Hunger needed fear and unwillingness to be able to feed properly, Peter should bury the knowledge that Sylar wasn't really like this. She could lock it deep in her heart, to keep their love warm, and let herself fall into the spell that Sylar was weaving. It wasn't enough just to give over her body for Sylar to use; Sylar needed for Peter's psyche to play along, too. She could do it. To keep Sylar safe, to keep other people safe from him, to keep his abilities available in case they were needed, she could do it. It was only pain and fear; she'd dealt with those plenty of times before. Compared to being locked in a shipping container for weeks at a time, really, this should be a walk in the park. Peter gave herself a mental shake and opened her eyes.

Sylar stopped cutting her for a moment, and Peter took the opportunity to take a deep breath, only to be startled by Sylar's sticking out his tongue and licking the blood from her breast. "Mmm, A Positive. Always very tasty."

"I'm O Positive," Peter said.

"_You_ may be O+, but donor of your current body is A+." Sylar smirked. "Trust me when I say I've tasted enough blood to be a connoisseur."

Peter wrinkled her nose. "Sylar, that's _disgusting."_

"Yes, to self-righteous idiots everywhere." Sylar snorted. "There's power in blood, Peter; even primitive man knew that. You, yourself, choose to spend half your day steeped in it!"

"That's different from drinking it!"

Sylar smiled smugly. "That just leaves more for me." He gestured to Peter's breast. "And look what I've made, a five-pointed star. I told you it was a constellation." He looked consideringly at Peter. "You're a paramedic, so you might know this. When you do a decorative cutting on someone, you're not supposed to completely enclose an area of skin, because that keeps it from getting circulation, and that area of skin could die." He smiled maliciously. "But I'm not playing, Peter. Well, I _am, _but not the kind of playing where your welfare or safety matter." He gestured with his hand, and the star-shaped patch of skin was yanked from Peter's body by telekinetic force, sailing to Sylar's hand and landing there with a wet splat. "Since I don't need to take your ability, I thought I'd take some other sort of souvenir." He caressed the star-shaped piece of skin with his other hand. "Don't worry, Peter, I'll treasure this."

Peter felt her gorge rise, but she didn't want to give Sylar the satisfaction of showing him how much what he was doing was getting to her. She swallowed several times to settle her stomach, then said, "It's Nurse Connelly's skin, not mine, so it's not much of a souvenir."

Sylar smiled approvingly at him, as if he'd just walked into a trap. "Then you won't mind if I take more of it, will you?" he said, then laid the piece of skin on the massage table and raised his finger again. He joined a series of freckles on Peter's other breast, cutting more deeply this time and chuckling in glee after every telekinetic slash. Blood from several slashes ran down Peter's breast, converging at her nipple, and Sylar sucked the blood off of her nipple, smacking his lips and noting, "Better than mother's milk!"

Peter looked away, unwilling to watch her lover do this. Sylar used flight to rise a couple of feet off of the floor and grabbed Peter by the hair at the base of her skull and turned her head to face him. He shook her head slightly and glared into her eyes. "Eyes front, Petrelli, or I'll have to pin your head in place! I don't want you to miss a minute of the entertainment I have lined up for you."

"Maybe depravity bores me," Peter said in a disdainful voice.

Sylar gave him a vicious grin. "Oh, _yes, _Peter, DO challenge me! DO encourage me to do things to you that you won't find boring." He shook his head in mock sadness. "You've never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, have you, Peter? But don't worry! The things I'm going to do to you won't be subtle." He smirked. "It won't take a high IQ to appreciate them."

Sylar floated back down to the floor, and tossed balls of blue electricity from hand to hand. "I know you remember Elle's power, and how much fun it is when applied to the skin." He cocked his head and looked curious. "But have you ever experienced it inside an open wound? It's a much more ... stimulating experience, I assure you. The wetness of the blood more than doubles the conductivity." Sylar threw a ball of electricity at the star-shaped wound where Peter's skin had been ripped away, and Peter screamed as it connected.

"Oh, that's _good, _Peter," Sylar purred. He launched another ball of electricity at Peter's wound and threw back his head and moaned when Peter screamed again.

Peter felt slightly sick, not so much from the pain — she'd had worse — as from Sylar's moaning in pleasure at torturing her. _"Feeding," _she reminded herself. _"We agreed to call it 'feeding,' because that's what he's doing. It isn't really Sylar doing this; it's the Hunger." _Knowing that intellectually didn't make the experience any less disturbing, though. It still _looked _like Sylar, and the eyes that normally gazed at her lovingly regarded her instead with a gloating avidity; the mouth that normally smiled at her sneered and smirked instead. Peter took a deep breath and blew it out again, trying to focus on her love for Sylar and her need to protect everyone involved from the Hunger.

Sylar turned to Peter and gestured, and her body slid down the wall a foot, then held in this new location. He placed his forefinger against Peter's other breast, the one where lines had been cut, but the skin hadn't been ripped away. "Elle didn't have this level of control, but Intuitive Aptitude often gives me a deeper understanding of an ability than the original user had. You should be impressed by what I'm about to do, because nobody else could do this."

Sylar applied a thin thread of electricity to the first cut, positioning it exactly inside the the narrow slash, and the electricity sizzled as it entered the wound and touched the blood inside it. The pain was intense but over a tiny area, so Peter panted but managed not to scream. Sylar brought up a second hand and used the forefinger of that hand to apply a thin ribbon of electricity to a second slash, even as he used the forefinger of his first hand to apply another dose of electricity to the first cut. Peter gasped, refraining from screaming only out of sheer stubbornness, and Sylar said, "Two at once! I really _am_ better at this than anyone."

Peter glared at Sylar, liking the smug self-satisfaction even less than the pain. _"He really IS better at using abilities than anyone,"_ she thought,_ "So it's not untrue," _but somehow that only made it worse.

Sylar flexed his hands, and the blue sparks of electricity went away. He brought up James Walker's freezing ability, then touched a cold finger to Peter's left nipple, chilling it to the point of frostbite. Peter hissed as the cold paradoxically produced an intense burning sensation, and blisters formed on his nipple.

"I've chilled your nipple to just above freezing," Sylar said in a conversational tone. "I _could_ freeze your nipples solid and shatter them if I wanted to, but once they've shattered, I can't torture them anymore." He looked mock-sadly at Peter. "It's actually much more interesting to make you _wish _they'd frozen solid, since if they were frozen, they wouldn't hurt anymore." He pointed at the right nipple and chilled it until blisters formed, as Peter tried to breathe out the pain without making actual noise.

"And now let's warm them up, shall we?" Sylar flexed his hands, and the blue electricity was back, to be released against Peter's chilled nipples by both hands simultaneously. Peter screamed, and Sylar moaned throatily. "Oh, Peter, do that _again_," he said, sending another burst of electricity to Peter's nipples. She tensed up and tried not to scream, but the sound was ripped out of her by the pain, a pain that went on and on as Sylar applied electricity continuously for several minutes.

Sylar shuddered in ecstasy, and the electricity shut off abruptly as he lost control of the power, overcome by his pleasure. He breathed deeply for a few long moments, then collected himself and turned back to Peter. "Yes, I think maybe it's time for some fucking now. I've never had a red-haired cunt. Is it different? I guess you wouldn't know, would you? But you're about to."

Peter usually loved having sex with Sylar, but she didn't want _this _version of her lover to touch her. She looked at the killer with loathing and said, "Whether it's pain or rape, it's all torture, Sylar."

Rather than deterring Sylar, this made him look at her approvingly, as if she'd finally said something clever. "Yes, of course it is, Peter," Sylar said in a reasonable tone of voice. "That's why I'm doing it to you." He gestured at Peter, and she sailed from her position on the wall to the waiting massage table, rotated to lie on it face up. "But if I want you to be unwilling, I'll have to do something to ensure that, since you've shown a distressing willingness to have sex with me in the past."

Sylar grinned evilly at Peter, then walked over to the cloth-covered table, and removed the cloth with a flourish. Peter knew that Sylar wanted her to look at the table and be afraid of its contents, which automatically made her want to look away, simply because looking was expected. Curiosity won out, though, and she snuck a glance at the table. She couldn't see it very well from her supine position; all she could tell was that there was a long, narrow flat thing that might be a belt, a tube of something, and some little metal things that she couldn't quite discern from where she was.

Sylar picked up the belt-like thing and petted her cheek and forehead with it, allowing Peter to see that it was a strap of leather about a foot long attached to a wooden handle. Telekinesis abruptly pried her legs apart and held them that way, allowing Sylar access to her vulva.

"I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do and why," Sylar said, "Because anticipation is half the fun." He smirked at Peter. "Fun for _me, _of course, not fun for you." He held the implement where Peter could see it and assumed a superior, lecturing tone. "This is a tawse. It causes a very severe, stinging pain and deep, serious bruises. It hurts worse than a belt, worse than a cane, worse than most instruments of corporal punishment." He dropped the lecturing tone and smiled maliciously. "In other words, it hurts like bloody hell. I'm going to beat your cunt with it, and after I'm done with you, you won't want me to get anywhere _near_ that part of your body, much less fuck you as hard as I'm going to."

Peter stared at the tawse and swallowed. She remembered that she'd casually agreed to "rape," not having realized exactly how seriously Sylar had meant it, not having realized exactly what Sylar would need to do to ensure that his lover of the past year was definitely unwilling to have sex with him. Once again, she had jumped in before thinking, and once again, she was going to regret it.

Sylar raised the tawse, and Peter closed her eyes, refusing to watch him beat her. That didn't last long, however, as Sylar pried her eyelids open with his damnable telekinesis, forcing her to watch as he raised the tawse over his head and brought it down with a resounding thwack. Peter howled and raised her head to look down her body in disbelief, astonished that something so simple as a strip of leather could feel like fire against her skin.

Sylar reacted to her scream, drawing in a breath and closing his eyes briefly, as if savoring the finest of wines. He opened his eyes and looked at Peter, and it seemed to her that it was the Hunger that looked out of Sylar's eyes, the Hunger that stared into her face. Certainly the look was thirsty, impatient, voracious ... and not terribly human. It was not the look of a man who wanted to make love or even of a man who wanted to have sex; the Hunger wanted to _take_ and to feed. Even Peter's gallant spirit quailed momentarily at looking the Hunger in the face, before her characteristic grit reasserted itself, and she gathered her determination and fortitude and scowled into the Hunger's face.

Sylar smiled at her, a surprisingly genuine smile, and said, "Ah, Peter, you are the Hunger's perfect food. Such heart and such valor! No one else is as bountiful a meal as you." He raised the tawse again, and thrashed her labia with it. His arm became a blur as he beat her hard and fast, and it felt to Peter as if her vulva had been set on fire, a fire that burned higher at every blow. Peter shrieked in a register that hurt her throat, but Sylar didn't stop, battering her tender parts with an insane fury that promised no mercy and no quarter.

Eventually Sylar dropped the tawse on the floor, as Peter gasped for breath, exhausted by both the pain and her own screaming. Sylar picked Peter up in his arms and began to carry her from the massage table towards the bed. Finding herself free of telekinesis for the first time since her ordeal started, Peter tried to fight back, but the nurse's body was a lot weaker than his own, and she was exhausted from all that had come before. Fighting and struggling only seemed to turn Sylar on, without gaining her anything, so Peter changed tactics and deliberately went limp, so as to be less interesting or exciting.

Sylar chuckled at her reaction, refusing to be provoked. "Yes, DO rest up, Peter. You'll need your strength for what's coming." Sylar threw her on the bed and held her there with telekinesis as he removed his clothes and set them aside.

"Just a little more screaming, and then we can begin," he said as he reached out and used his actual physical fingers to crush her already sore nipples. Peter hissed but deliberately bit back a scream. She knew there was something about this situation that she was supposed to remember, but her injuries, the pain, and the screaming had depleted and confused her, and she was so light-headed and dizzy that she couldn't recall what it was that she was supposed to remember. Her default reaction, though, was not to give in, and in the absence of any memory of what she was supposed to be doing, she went with that. Since Sylar wanted her to scream, she refused to do so, even though her aching body desperately wanted that outlet.

Sylar removed his fingers from her nipples, paused, and listened intently for a moment, seeming to listen to something that Peter couldn't hear. He tilted his head to one side and looked closely at her for a moment, and she found herself unable to hold on to her own prohibition against screaming, no longer even remembered that she had decided not to scream.

Sylar crushed her nipples again, and this time she screamed and went on screaming as he twisted them viciously. "Yesss," he said in a satisfied tone of voice, then released her nipples and yanked her hips down towards the foot of the bed. He lined himself up, pushed her legs over her head, bending her in half, and entered her in one savage thrust.

Peter shrieked as he entered her, feeling the burning stretch of being entered too soon and too violently and the deep ache of having her bruises reawakened by Sylar's pounding himself against her.

Sylar hammered himself into her, thrusting with a force that seemed beyond the strength of an ordinary man. It was exquisitely painful, and Peter screamed again, but she had to know, and she managed to gasp out, "How ... are you doing this? Did you ... take a power? Got ... increased strength?"

"I'm using telekinesis to push myself into you harder than I could manage on my own." Sylar grinned down at her in satisfaction. "Never underestimate what I can do with telekinesis, because I am just that good!"

Peter scowled, and realizing that she had control over her face — left free so that she could scream — she spat into Sylar's face. Sylar wiped off the saliva by rubbing his face against Peter's, then smirked at her. "That counts as applause, when the game is rape," he said, but he refined his telekinetic hold on Peter's head so that only screaming was possible.

Although Peter knew intellectually that it was possible for a man to be raped, the potential for sexual assault had never loomed large as a threat in his life, the way it had in the lives of his female friends. She'd agreed to let Sylar force her into sex all too readily, having suffered plenty of beatings before and thinking that forced sex would be about the same. But an intimate assault was all the more affecting _because _it was intimate, and she realized that this was going to break something in her in a way that the non-sexual torture hadn't done. Exhausted, overwhelmed, and sick at heart, Peter began to cry.

Sylar stilled inside of her. He looked closely at her face, then tilted his head and got that listening look again, ending with a look of nauseated revulsion. He withdrew from inside her and lowered her legs carefully to the bed, then gently stroked her face with his hand.

Peter felt all of her wounds begin to heal, as Sylar stopped using René's power, and Peter's regeneration reasserted itself. Her head cleared as she healed, and she looked up at Sylar, who was seated on the bed beside her, caressing her face lovingly. "What's up?" she asked.

Sylar sighed. "The Hunger wanted to rape you, and it fed greedily from the beginnings of it, but I could tell how much it was costing you, and that made me feel sick." He shook his head. "I just couldn't keep doing that to you."

Peter blew out a breath, then pulled her lover down on top of her, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tightly. "I'm beyond relieved to hear that. It was way more disturbing than I'd realized it would be, and I think if you'd finished it, it would have broken something in me that regeneration couldn't heal."

"Your heart, Peter. It would have broken that loving and valiant heart, and Hunger or no Hunger, there's no way I could do something so horrific."

Sylar started to get up, and Peter grabbed him. "Don't go. Remind me of who you are now. Remind me of the truth of us."

"Do you want to take shape-shifting and turn back into yourself?"

Peter shook her head. "No. You hurt me like this, and I want you to take care of me like this."

Sylar nodded. "Whatever you want." He kissed Peter's forehead, so gently that Peter could scarcely feel it, then laid a gentle kiss on each eyelid. He kissed his way down Peter's shape-shifted face, gently kissing the freckled nose, the round cheeks, the smooth chin. He laid a gentle kiss on Peter's lips, then began caressing her with his hands, feather-light touches lovingly applied to her neck and shoulders, running gently down her arms.

Peter stared at him the whole time, watching his face as he kissed her, watching him caress her, searching his face for some trace of the man who had just hurt her and not finding it. She drew in a deep breath and exhaled for a long time, then did it again, drawing in great lungfuls of air and breathing out the traumatic experience.

Sylar continued to caress her gently, touching her to soothe, rather than to arouse, and his obvious care for Peter helped her separate her lover from the Hunger that had been riding him earlier. She reached out with her empathy — something she'd known better than to do while the Hunger had hold of him — and assessed Sylar's emotions. She could sense guilt ... and self-disgust ... and a feeling of being tainted or contaminated, along with a truly crushing fear of losing what he valued most. Peter put a hand on Sylar's arm and asked, "How do you feel?"

Sylar looked at her questioningly. "How do _**I **_feel? Isn't it how _you_ feel that's important?"

Peter shook her head. "I'm realizing that we've _both_ been through an ordeal here. Just because I was the one doing the screaming, that doesn't mean that this wasn't hard for you."

Sylar sighed and dropped his head, sagging against Peter. "I realize now why I never tried to be good before. Feeding the Hunger while having the sensibilities of a good person ..." He shuddered. "That may be the hardest thing I've ever done."

Peter put a hand on either side of Sylar's head and lifted it slightly so that she could look into his eyes. "But you _did _enjoy it. I could tell, while you were feeding on me, you were having a great time."

Sylar swallowed. "I ... yes, I did enjoy it. The Hunger _loves _being fed, and it's impossible to feed it and not feel pleasure, even ecstasy." He blew out a breath. "But my moral sense and my sense of self were screaming inside the whole time. I hated that I loved it." He rolled his eyes. "If that makes any sense at all."

Peter smiled. "Yeah, it does. But Intuitive Aptitude isn't something you chose; it's the ability you inherited from your father. The Hunger comes along with your ability, and that makes it not your fault."

Sylar shook his head. "The Company took away my abilities right after Kirby Plaza, and I moved heaven and earth to get them back again. I may have been born with this ability, but I _chose _to regain it, to have it now. I'm still choosing to have it. I could ask Noah Bennett about surgery or drugs or something, but I'm ... I'm not willing to give up my ability." He sagged again. "I guess that means that my reformation isn't as sincere as I believed."

Peter shook him gently. "Sylar, Sylar, don't do this to yourself. The only choice you had was to have your ability or not to have it; you never got to choose _which _ability would be your basic power. Your choice is Intuitive Aptitude or no Intuitive Aptitude, not Intuitive Aptitude vs. Empathic Mimicry or Intuitive Aptitude vs. Time-Space Manipulation or some other ability instead. It's not in you to choose to be ordinary when you could have a power, and I don't blame you for that."

Sylar sighed. "Thanks, I ... thanks. That means a lot, coming from you."

"I'm wondering something, though."

Sylar tensed. "Yeah?"

"You used to feed the Hunger by killing people and taking their abilities, which meant that the Hunger got large feedings every once in awhile."

Sylar nodded, looking at Peter with obvious trepidation about what was coming next.

"So when you tried to feed the Hunger without killing, you planned to reproduce the pattern of periodic large feedings. What would happen if you tried for a small feeding every day or two? Could you do something a hell of a lot smaller but do it way more frequently?"

Sylar smacked himself in the forehead. "I'm an idiot! That ... that never occurred to me."

Peter smiled. "Well, it didn't occur to me, either, until I'd experienced what a large feeding was like." She injected a teasing note into her voice. "I gotta tell you, experiencing a large feeding is certainly inspiring."

Sylar laughed, as much out of surprise as anything. "Yeah, I'll bet." He sobered. "The answer to your question is 'I don't know.' I don't know if the Hunger can be given small, regular feedings instead of large occasional ones. It's an idea that's certainly worth testing, though."

Peter ran her hand along Sylar's face. "I think you know I enjoy it when you show occasional flashes of darkness when we're in bed."

Sylar smiled and nodded.

"But the full-on serial killer mode is really more than I can handle. If you give me just a flash of that darkness every day, I think we might both get what we want."

Sylar smiled relievedly. "It's a deal."

"And _now_ I'll take shape-shifting."

Sylar nodded and kissed her, and Peter grabbed shape-shifting from Sylar's lips. She broke away from the kiss, sat up, then stood beside the bed, and after a moment her appearance rippled as she resumed Peter Petrelli's usual form. Peter waggled his head from side to side, as if testing it, then held a hand in front of his face and looked at it. He exhaled heavily and sagged slightly, and Sylar stood up, wrapped both arms around him, and hugged him tightly.

Peter hugged Sylar back, then pulled away and looked at his lover. "You told me that while I'm in this form, I'm your beloved."

Sylar looked down and grimaced, then looked back up. "It turns out that you're my beloved no matter what form you're in. I'll never hurt you like that again, Peter. I promise."

Peter grinned crookedly at him. "But you'll hurt me a little bit every day, in between fucking me so hard I can't walk."

Sylar swallowed and looked at Peter in awe. "I haven't lost you! And this hasn't made you afraid of me or revolted by the games we usually play."

Peter put a hand on each of Sylar's shoulders and looked directly into his eyes. "You're never losing me. And what you did today was prove that I really _can _trust you, that you really _have _changed."

Sylar laughed. "Only you would take it that way, Peter Petrelli. Only you. I guess that's why I love you."

Peter smiled. "Look at it this way, even with today added in, you've still hurt me less than Nathan, Arthur, and Ma."

Sylar looked at him in wonder. "How did a heart like yours come from them?"

Peter shrugged. "It's the 'empath' part of Empathic Mimicry. I'm the product of my ability, just like you're the product of yours."

"That's ... that's really true, isn't it?" Sylar paused as that sunk in. "That means that I'm not innately evil."

"Sylar." Peter rolled his eyes. "As long ago as Kirby Plaza, you WANTED to be a hero." He shrugged. "Now you are."

Sylar smiled lovingly at Peter and didn't tell him who he thought the real hero was.

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**Author's Note: **

**1.** This chapter turned out to have a different tone than I'd expected when I wrote Chapter 1. I'd been planning somewhat violent porn for Chapter 2, but once I started writing it, I realized that making it porny would be emotionally dishonest, given the situation I'd put the characters in. So Chapter 2 is more disturbing than hot. Sorry about that! Perhaps I'll plan better in the future. Or perhaps porn just isn't what I'm supposed to write. :-)

**2. **I have no idea if different blood types actually have different flavors, but it seems unlikely. I had Sylar talk about the flavor of A+ blood just to freak Peter out. He may be lying here. :-)

**3. **Although it is canon that Sylar loses all of his powers during the Shanti virus and gets back only his original power and telekinesis when he's cured, that never made sense to me. Since Sylar's copying of powers depends on his knowing and understanding how a power works, it seems to me that once he got his original power back, he'd be able to use that knowledge and understanding to regain any of the powers he'd gotten through the study of his victim's brains. So in this story, Sylar can make use of any of the powers he's acquired, regardless of whether he acquired them before or after the virus. I'm also assuming that living inside Matt Parkman's head for six weeks gave him an understanding of how telepathy works, thus adding that power to Sylar's repertoire.

**4.** I feel a little weird about having written that, so if you enjoyed this chapter, I hope you'll leave me a comment, even if it's just one word. :-)

**5. **This is fan fiction, made for love, not for money. Nobody pays me for this stuff; heck, I'm lucky if people even READ me. :-) (Er, that's my legal disclaimer. Guess it's good I'm not a lawyer.)

**6. **Thanks for reading!

**7. ** Yes, I'm still writing Star Trek TOS! I have a chronic illness that greatly limits me, and there are a lot of days when I can't write at all, and a lot of other days when I can only write very simple fluff. I do intend to finish every story that I start ... eventually. Thanks for your patience.

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